It's election season in the USA, also known as Silly Season and Fucking Useless Season of Idiocy. I hate this season with a passion, as "issues" get completely submerged in appearance, attack ads, and assholes. Therefore, because I am an idiot, I present my Eight Point Plan for Cleaning Up the Fuckjob That American Elections Have Become.

1) In order to enter any race for political office, a candidate only needs to sign up. No signatures, no fees, no parties. If you want on the ballot, you put your name down. All the crazies in the world can run. (For national elections this would have to amended for sheer practicality - perhaps only the first thousand to sign up could run, or perhaps there'd be a national lottery among the applicants to narrow it down randomly to 100.)

2) No campaigning of any kind. No signs, no media, no advertisements. Fuck that shit. Alternately, campaigning would be allowed, but strictly controlled: campaign money would be provided by the state, from tax dollars, the exact same amount for each candidate.

3) Every candidate, when they sign up, takes a 10 or 20 question test, across a whole range of issues - abortion, corporate welfare, social programs, foreign relations, religion, sexuality, whatever - designed to place them politically on a scale, from most "conservative" to most "liberal." It's the LiveJournal method of political categorization! Assign whatever names you want; in this Plan they're simply assigned letters, A through Z, 26 slots to account for most major ideological gradations. Dubya might end up being an S, as a corporate-whoring God-listener, while Kerry would be an M, a few grades to his left and staunchly in the middle. I'd be a C or D, much farther left, and Pat Buchanan would be a V or W.

4) Prior to the primary elections, the electoral officials mail out an election guide to all constituents of the election - local for local elections, country-wide for President and such - with all the candidates, a simple statement of ideology from each one, as well as their "party" affiliation. No pictures, no commentary, no "informed opinions."

5) Before an individual can vote, they take the exact same test the candidates do, and are also assigned a letter, as "membership" in a "party."

6) In the primary election (undertaken only to narrow the candidates down to a manageable number, say five,) voters may only vote for those candidates who match their "party." In this way the final election only has candidates who most closely match, politically, the majority of their possible constituents.

7) A single televised debate will take place for each race. All candidates who made it through the primary answer questions submitted by voters and selected randomly - i.e. anyone can submit a question, but they don't know which candidate is going to have to answer it, assuming it's chosen.)

8) The final election is run on an Australian ballot system. Each voter ranks the candidates in the order of their preference, and each first place vote counts 5, each second place vote counts 4, and so on. The candidate with the most total votes wins.

I don't pretend that any of this is even practical; it's my entry into the Church of Wouldn't-It-Be-Pretty-To-Think-So. I just wanted to take all the non-important crap out of the process and only leave those things that will truly reflect constituent belief. The candidates in the final election will be those 5 who most closely match the majority of their prospective constituents, and the Australian ballot means that a candidate with a narrow ideological view must "reach out" towards those voters not in their party with a more moderate, wide-reaching platform. Voters would be enfranchised in the winner on a much larger scale, as their votes count towards the winner regardless of who that is.

In my system, moon ponies would be given to everyone (except foreigners,) Half-Life 2 and a nice machine on which to run it would be an inalienable right, and UAC would have a kung-fu contest with PA in which Gabe and Tycho would cry. How can you not like it? Unless you're un-American, in which case the turrists win and America is no longer safe for cutting taxes and increasing spending.

Instant runoff voting (what you call Australian style) would, by itself, be a relatively easy and painless way to make the system better. I understand another fun Aussie election technique is compulsory voting. Fuck your lack of opinion, pick one anyway.

Money is obviously a problem; strict control of finances is the only reasonable way. As a radical suggestion; anyone who donates money to the campaign will not be allowed any contact with any representative of the elected government until the term expires.

Assigning people political affiliations by mutiple choice test might be interesting. Rural Kansans might find out that the only thing they have in common with Republicans is that they like guns and hate Hollywood.

More debates though, not fewer. If you're automatically disallowing any sort of campaign, the candidates have to differentiate themselves somehow. And appearances on the Tonight Show or Oprah are explicitly forbidden.

So yeah, interesting ideas, but have fun passing enough constitutional amendments to make it happen.

Here's what I want. I don't want to let any random citizen become president, because I don't want Carrot Top or Rush Limbaugh to be president. I want even amounts of money. Each party can raise a small amount of money (10-20 million), and one can't have more than the other. This party then gives this money to their candidate who must use all of it between June and September. I don't want specific candidates to raise money, because then they won't have loyalty to the Enrons of the world.

Sgt Hulka-I punched the toilets for about 5 mins and never got them to flush.

Instant runoff voting (what you call Australian style) would, by itself, be a relatively easy and painless way to make the system better. I understand another fun Aussie election technique is compulsory voting. Fuck your lack of opinion, pick one anyway.

There is no onus on anyone to vote in Australia, merely turn up to vote. Once you're there, you can turn in a blank ballot, draw a scathing caricature of your most hated celebrity, craft a perfectly balanced piece of origami, or write pi to the 10000th decimal place.

All that happens is that the people counting your vote think poorly of you and throw your ballot away. All we do is close the effort gap between voting and not voting so that people have one less excuse. Preferential voting is also a wonderful thing, because you can vote for the Monster Raving Loony party, and still put Kerry on your ballot as a second choice for when your first choice is taken out of the running.

"Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life."
-- (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Joker, Ph.D. Procedural Assholian Behaviour, Pedophilosopher- All your ass are belong to my wang Jafd. Prepare to are penetration.
"I fart in THX." - Sgt_HulkaPENETRATOR: Rise of the Wang Cuming "When it's done".
The American government and its supporters suck cock. See Fahrenheit 9/11 and discover the truth.

I believe everyone who can vote, should vote. However, compulsory voting is a bad idea. A vote not cast is better then an uninformed/random vote.

And regarding 3). That's a horrible HORRIBLE idea, even for moon pony world.

Read my lips; "Left-Right" scale? Bad. Very very bad. One of the reasons imho that parties always start to look alike is because of this damn scale and everyone's desire to rate every single political party on it.

"After viewing explosive anal bleeding I vowed to never use the internet again." - Anonymous User

you really need more parties. look at us, we got conservatives, labour, but there are also the libdems (who are utterly useless) and the uk independance party (who want us out of EU) also stealing votes :)

If anyone has digital cable and uses Time Warner, do me a favor and check your on demand for "Election 2004" - I don't know if it's just my local provider, or if it's all of Time Warner, but apparently all of the information you need to know to make your informed election decision for this year can be found in speeches and such from the Republican National Convention. There is not a single bit from the DNC, or from any democrat whatsoever.

Texas is a notoriously conservative state, and my area is obsessed with Bush. I'm surrounded daily by jellyheaded fools who come to work an spout off their insightful opinions which, I have noticed over the years, usually come from the previous night's programming on Fox News. Of course, my office is completely plastered with anti-politics imagery. The majority of it is anti-bush, just because I love to fuck with the idiots that come into my office. However, since Kerry isn't a very attractive alternative, I have a good bit off anti-johnny stuff up as well.

Anyway, it just steams me that "Election 2004" means "Repulicans 2004" as far as my cable company is provided. Bleh.

"What I've always figured is that every now and again a certain series of events or images are processed by the brain and mistakenly stored in "My Documents" but not in "My Recent Documents" and thus you feel the sensation that the events happened weeks or maybe months ago (perhaps in a dream) when they're plainly unfolding before your eyes. I say it beats a BSOD. Go brain!"
- lwf on deja vu, PlanetCrap

To me, at the end of the day, the difference betwen Bush and Kerry is singular and simple:

George Bush is a rich, white-boy elitiest, born with a silver spoon in his mouth and great lineage.
John Kerry ditto.

The difference?

The former is a mindless frat boy who spent his life partying and is now a "born again" Christian who gets messages from God and lives on his very own ranch....which he never set foot on until he bought it for the 2000 primaries in an effort to change his image from mindless playboy dumbfuck into the rough and ready Texas cowboy he tries so hard to be today.

The latter is a snobbish east coast liberal who was groomed, almost since before he could piss in the toliet, to enter politics. He's had ambitions of the presidency for decades and has the education, experience, and drive to be a great president. Unfortunately, his policies and actions will be almost indistinguishable from Bush's, only he will actuall read the newspaper and make decisions based on information and intelligence rather than on personal conversations with God.

So one is dumb, the other is smart - but in the end, it's really meaningless. They'll both do the same things, just with different verbiage.

Again, I remind people it's not just the president himself. It's also his cabinet and his judicial appointments. Anyone who thinks Kerry and Bush are basically the same at the policy level is incorrect (an obvious example, Kerry wouldn't support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, Kerry also wouldn't continue to insinuate faith based everything into public health policy and scientific issues).

Kerry would support government funded stem-cell research, Bush wouldn't. Add that to the few examples Hugin has given and Kerry is just different enough more me. Anyway, my vote is against Bush, not for Kerry.

Sgt Hulka-I punched the toilets for about 5 mins and never got them to flush.

Yes, yes, I'm incorrect and stupid....or maybe I was making a generalization and even used the word "usually" in there. And I must remind people, when one says Bush or Kerry, one is usually speaking of the entire administration, since they are one and the same. Also, please note that it is not only insulting to the person with whom you are speaking, but it makes you look at least a little dense, or just going for a minor zing, to berate someone for your apparent incapacity to understand that people know that the president and cabinet are intertwined, and by referring to Bush or Kerry, that one is referring also to their respective cabinets. Use common sense and context, Hugin. I expect more, and demand more, of you. Also, just to address one more of your comments, Hugin, I thought I made it clear that Kerry would base his decisions off of intelligence and not religion....

Anyway, domestically is where Bush and Kerry's differences will be most apparent. Foreign policy will not change that much, and that is what most people are most concerned about right now. I do think that Kerry will do more to rebuild the bridges that Bush has burned, and will play in the global chess game with a solid understanding of everyone's pieces, whereas Bush is blind and ignorant when it comes to the global stage. This alone makes him worth voting for over Bush.

However, at the end of the day, Kerry is not very different from Bush when it comes down to it. Sure, there will be some domestic issues, but I suspect not as many as you think. I'd be surprised if Kerry really makes a strong stance on the gay marriage issue unless forced. I know he has already spoken against the defense of marriage act, but anyone who feels that he will make it an issue of importance is, in my opinion, being naive. Also, since we are apparently "reminding" people of obvious facts, I must once again remind people that the president alone does not make constitutional amendments. I doubt that it will ever come down to presidential intervention, but that's just a hunch. Still, it's certainly a good reason to vote for him if its an issue important to you and you want to make sure that, if it does go that far, the guy you have in office will squash it.

Kerry is even more Pro-Israel than Bush, for instance, and our relations with Israel are in no small part responsible for our troubles with the Islamic world. Kerry will continue Bush's campaign against the "Axis of Evil" in a more diplomatic fashion, but he will still pursue it and it will still come to pass. Do I need to remind anyone of the foreign policy of the last democrat we had for president? Look up how depleted uranium Clinton pelted Iraq with.

Anyway, anyone who thinks that Kerry and Bush (and their respective cabinets, for those of you who insist that we make the distinction) are very different at the any general level isn't really looking at the big picture. A few stances here and there are one thing, and granted an important thing if the particular stance is something that resonates with you. However, taken as a whole, the majority of his actions will be no different than George W. or Clinton before him, or Bush or Reagan before him. I suggest you go and research the trends in American foreign policy since Kennedy if you want to argue this out. The point is, there is very little difference in the democrat and republican parties, and the dividing gap is growing smaller and smaller every year. So far during this campaign, Kerry has been so moderate that he's bound to have to world's worst wedgie from the fence posts jamming into his ass.

There are many issues that I would vote Kerry over Bush, his stance on public education being one of them. However, at the end up the day, when his term is run and the tally is taken, I think we'll find that most of what he did was maintain the status quo but with a democractic spin. If you disagree, that's fine. That's your opinion, and I will not be so arrogant or insulting as to say that you are just plain incorrect.

Jeet, if I were specifically calling you stupid I'd say you were stupid. I don't think you're stupid. I think you're wrong, which is very different.

And I must remind people, when one says Bush or Kerry, one is usually speaking of the entire administration, since they are one and the same.

But in your post you simply weren't. Every single sentence in your #33 post refers to Bush and Kerry as individual people and comments on their specific life histories, personalities, and foibles.

And while I generally agree with you that there will be greater differences between the adminsitrations on domestic policy than foreign, I continue to disagree with your notion that overall these differences are minor. The specific different stances "here and there" have vast cumulative consequences, especially at the regulatory level rather than the legislative. Restrictions based on funding, directives as to the priorities of federal departments, hundreds of sub-cabinet level appointments, judicial appointments...public health policy, education policy, diplomatic appointments, merely giving or not giving the religious right a national platform from the oval office...

I'm sorry if you think I'm berating you, I'm not. I just think you're wrong. And I think that "The candidates are the same/the parties are the same" is the most dangerous misconception in American policial life, one that helps lead to the kind of voter apathy that's threatening our democracy. Are the democrats racing to the center? Yes. Does money talk for both sides? Yes. If Kerry takes office, will all the trouble spots in the world suddenly sprout fields of flowers while rainbows arc across the sky? No. But the parties are not the same, and the men are not the same, and it would be impossible in a thousand ways from the top of our government to the bottom for the administrations to be the same.

Joker, Ph.D. Procedural Assholian Behaviour, Pedophilosopher- All your ass are belong to my wang Jafd. Prepare to are penetration.
"I fart in THX." - Sgt_HulkaPENETRATOR: Rise of the Wang Cuming "When it's done".
The American government and its supporters suck cock. See Fahrenheit 9/11 and discover the truth.

Of course they're not carbon copies, but what I said was that the difference gap is closing more and more each year. I don't honestly see how you could seriously dispute this.

While I agree that the two parties coming closer together is dangerous, I don't agree that it's a misconception. Look at the facts, look at American policy trends for the past 30 years, look at the behavior of the two parties. There are very few hardline issues left. The biggest issues are all domestic, and the majority are in civil rights. Beyond that, the two parties are - in the general, big picture sense - behaving more and more alike, just with different methodologies and verbiage.

I don't suspect any sort of big conspiracy or anything, but more just the ultimate result of our system. We've practically lost the concept of free enterprise, for instance, due to the rise and growth of big business and its influence on policy. And make no mistake, that influence is extremely far reaching....just look at Haliburton and Iraq.

You're absolutely right when you say that all the trouble spots in the world won't suddenly stop if Kerry is elected. At the same time, all of the trouble spots in the world won't just stay the same or get worse if Bush stays in office. The question you need to be asking is how much will things change with Kerry over Bush, or vice versa. Will our foreign policy change that much if Kerry is elected? What will America do that much differently with Kerry in office than with Bush? Sure, Kerry will do his best to make amends with all the countries that Bush has pissed off, and that's a good thing. And yeah, he'll probably be more successful and diplomacy and negotiation, up to a point - but what will the end result be? What will we do with North Korea or Iran with Kerry that we don't do with Bush? I suspect we'll achieve the same end result, regardless of who is in office, just that one will do it smarter than the other. Thus, the election in this regard becomes less about the issue and more about the candidate's competency to carry out the same objective.

Of course there will be specific differences between the two presidents and their administrations, I'm not arguing that. I'm not even arguing that there aren't differences between the parties, because there are. What I'm saying is that, on the large scale or the big picture or however you want to phrase it, American policy has slowly been adopting certain trends for the past few decades that do not change, regardless of the political alignment of who is in office.

In the end, you must choose the candidate whom you think will best serve your interests and in the manner that you feel would be best for the country. Specific issues will no doubt come into play in that regard, and this is why we will always have the two party system. Sadly, until we get a strong enough voice for serious and far reaching change, and much less blinders-on resistance to the idea that the two party system is becoming, more and more every year, cosmetic at best, things will continue on as they have for these past years. Personally, I do not like where American policy has been headed and is heading, and I would very much like to see a viable candidate that I could vote for, who has a legitimate chance of winning, who I would feel confident would make a concentrated effort to alter the seemingly pre-destined course that America has charted for herself. Currently, and on into the future as long as we have this "farce" (quotes used to signify my opinion) of a two-party system in place, I do not think I will ever get that candidate or that chance, and frankly, that pisses me off.

At the same time, all of the trouble spots in the world won't just stay the same or get worse if Bush stays in office.

I absolutely disagree with this. I think in the last four years Bush has done incredible damage and severely exacerbated the trouble spots of the world, and I think given another four years he can certainly make things a lot worse than he already has.

"It's a game. Let them put a packet of sugar in the tea, let them decorate the walls a little, and for god's sake sit on this cushion. It won't kill you." - Hugin